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Two Kings of Racing Spoil Orb’s Bid for Crown

Oxbow, with jockey Gary Stevens, led the pack for the entire race.Credit
Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

BALTIMORE — They are a couple of old guys, D. Wayne Lukas and Gary Stevens, and for nearly 30 years, they have fallen in love on the racetrack, traded harsh words off it and fallen back in love enough times to be made honorary Kardashians. Trainers fire riders. Jockeys cheat on trainers with faster horses.

In January, Lukas, 77, called Stevens, 50, and told him about a colt in his care named Oxbow who was going to spice up what had become a melancholy twilight of their Hall of Fame careers.

Lukas, a training legend, had won 13 Triple Crown races but had not reached the winner’s circle of one since 2000. Stevens had recently come out of retirement as a jockey after spending the last seven years in the broadcast booth and as an actor in Hollywood.

Now, in the middle of May as the Preakness Stakes was looming, no one was talking about either of them. The focus was on Orb, the colt who glided home like a swamp buggy two weeks ago on a sloppy racetrack in the Kentucky Derby. Orb had his own old guys: the owners Ogden Mills Phipps, 72, and Stuart S. Janney III, 64, whose family had been American racetrack royalty for nearly a century, and the trainer Shug McGaughey, 62, a Hall of Famer.

Saturday was supposed to be their day. Bettors said so, making the long-striding Orb a 3-5 favorite. In fact, this was supposed to be horse racing’s year: Orb had the look of a potential Triple Crown champion, and many who love this sport were certain that the colt was going to join greats like Secretariat, Seattle Slew and Affirmed and become the first horse to earn that crown in 35 years.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the history books, and the announced crowd of 117,203 at Pimlico Race Course knew something magical was afoot when Oxbow led the field of nine into the first turn as if they were taking in the sights on a pleasure ride. Stevens saw his gritty little colt’s ears flicking and knew Oxbow’s mind was right.

In the Derby, Stevens and Oxbow, a son of Awesome Again, pressed a wickedly fast pace and, in the stretch, watched Orb and four others gust past them like cyclones, leaving them in sixth place. Not here, not now. Stevens had Oxbow ticking like a metronome through lullaby fractions: 48.60 seconds for a half-mile, 1 minute 13.26 seconds for three-quarters of a mile.

“I was just walking the dog,” Stevens said.

Behind him, jockey Joel Rosario believed he had Orb rolling. He was five lengths back, plenty close for his thunderous turn of foot. In the clubhouse, however, McGaughey could see that Orb was not himself. McGaughey’s colt was along the rail and inside rivals for the first time in his nine-race career.

“He got himself in a position he wasn’t comfortable,” McGaughey said. “The pace was slower than I anticipated. I thought the pace would be quicker. I thought maybe they would speed it up a little bit.”

There was no reason for Stevens to quicken.

“Are you kidding me?” he recalled thinking as he headed into the turn. “Is this happening?”

He was certain the race was over. He had plenty of horse, and he knew he had already disarmed Orb’s late rush. He peeked beneath his arm and watched as Rosario urged his big colt to pounce, but instead, Orb backed up.

“He had a hard time keeping up,” Rosario said of Orb. “He usually takes you there, but today, he never took off.”

Stevens rode the rail around the far turn as if it were a catapult and then shot his colt out to the center of the track, where the dirt was firmer and faster. That is what Hall of Famers do: identify the racetrack’s conveyor belt and then ride it.

“He exploded off the turn,” Stevens said. “We were running when I hit the lane.”

Stevens waited for someone, anyone to challenge him. John Velazquez and Itsmyluckyday were in motion, but they had three lengths to make up. Rosie Napravnik and Mylute launched a late bid. But neither colt was enough of a threat to stop Stevens’s mind from drifting back to his first Triple Crown victory, in 1988, when he was aboard the filly Winning Colors in the Derby.

“Wayne Lukas put me on that horse,” he said of Winning Colors, after Oxbow had won by a length and three-quarters.

He was once more smitten with the old trainer. Lukas returned the love. “That was a Hall of Fame ride,” he said.

Those who believed in the old couple and their long-shot colt were rewarded with a $32.80 return on a $2 bet. No one will crow about Oxbow’s time of 1:57.54 for the mile and three-sixteenths — except for Lukas, who passed Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons as the trainer with the most Triple Crown wins, 14.

Stevens, too, will remember Oxbow fondly. The win was his third Preakness victory and ninth Triple Crown triumph. It had been a long time between sips of Champagne for Stevens, too. He rode Point Given to Preakness and Belmont Stakes victories in 2001.

Lukas knew that the Phippses, the Janneys and the McGaugheys were hurting after the race. He calls them friends and understands that they know, better than most, that the disappointments in the sport come harder and more frequently than the moments of elation.

He offered them his empathy and then uttered the words that those with fast horses have said to one another for centuries.

“I get paid to spoil dreams,” Lukas said. “We go over there and run them. You can’t mail them in.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 19, 2013, on Page SP1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Upset, Two Kings of Racing Spoil Orb’s Pursuit of a Crown. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe